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Cruising Hingis, Seles, Kournikova earn easy wins at State Farm
Posted: Friday March 03, 2000 08:53 AM
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) -- Sandrine Testud has seen Martina Hingis' elegant arsenal of shots before. She just hasn't figured out how to handle them. The Swiss star, in her 132nd career week as the world's top-ranked player, beat Testud for the third time this year and the ninth time in as many meetings Thursday night to advance to the semifinals of the State Farm Women's Tennis Classic. In their previous meetings dating to 1995, there were four three-set matches and five tiebreakers. One came in this year's Australian Open, where Hingis knocked Testud out of the fourth round and went on to reach the final for the fourth consecutive year. But Hingis had a relatively easy time in this tournament, discouraging her opponent by chasing down shot after shot in a 6-4, 6-2 triumph. "I was covering the court pretty well, I think," Hingis said. "When she had the opportunity to get a winner, she knew she had to get it into the corner. Otherwise, I'm going to get there. And sometimes I hit some great shots." No. 7 Testud, ranked 11th by the WTA, said no one else gives her the problems of Hingis. "She doesn't give you any free points," the Frenchwoman said. "That's her biggest weapon. She doesn't have the groundstrokes of a Williams or a Davenport, but she just doesn't miss." The match was the first quarterfinal of the tournament. Hingis' opponent on Saturday will be another Frenchwoman - either Mary Pierce, the No. 3 seeded player in the tournament, or Nathalie Dechy, who outlasted wild card Meghann Shaughnessy 6-3, 4-6, 6-1 in one of the last three second-round matches during the afternoon. Monica Seles weathered her second straight high-intensity set to beat eighth-seeded Barbara Schett 7-6 (9), 6-1, and No. 6 Anna Kournikova of Russia beat Austria qualifier Sylvia Plischke 6-1, 6-1. Seles plays No. 2 Lindsay Davenport in one quarterfinal and Kournikova meets Ai Sugiyama. Seles, unseeded in a WTA event for the first time since 1989 despite a victory Sunday that lifted her to No. 9 in the world, came back from a six-month layoff because of a broken foot to win her 45th career match in her first competition. She improved to 6-0 this year after surviving the tiebreaker. "At the end, it comes down to who's better and who performs better under a tight bit of pressure, but still there's an awful lot of luck involved," she said. Seles fought off four set points the day before in a first-round win over Silvija Talaja, and she faced one set point against Schett, Austria's highest-ranked player (No. 13). Schett had a 9-8 lead in the tiebreaker, and Seles tied it for the last time with a forehand winner. Two points later, she ended the set with a service winner to Schett's forehand. "I have big trouble with her serve," said Schett, winless in five matches with Seles. "I don't really like her serve. I just don't like left-hand serves. It's good that there's not too many left-handers on the tour." The second set lasted only 21 minutes as Seles broke the frustrated Schett in the first, third and seventh games.
"When I felt the air go out of her was at 3-love," Seles said. "I think she had those two breaks, I knew then."
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